" I think toilets are more important than temples. No matter how many temples we go to, we are not going to get salvation. We need to give priority to toilets and cleanliness."
- Jairam Ramesh (member of parliament, India)
Nature calls you whenever it pleases. When nature calls you have to be prepared to face the adversity if you are in a public space. One such close to worse incident happened to me a few weeks back. I was waiting at Railway Square for a friend after office hours. The nature called for number one while I was waiting. I had to attend the men's room before my friend got to Railway Square. Like any regular person I looked for signs for public toilets. No signs possibly visible! Next thought was to ask the guy at the convenience store for the nearest toilets. He suggested McDonalds. I headed to McDonalds only to know that they keep their toilets locked and can be used by their patrons only. Next Stop KFC; the same story repeated. In the process it took me half an hour to figure out that there is one public toilet at the extreme end of the railway station only to realize that it was on the other side of the ticket barriers. Lucky that I had my opal card on me to enter the station.
During the last few weeks this incident and public toilets have been haunting me very dearly. It got me thinking on why there is a lack of public toilets in a city like Sydney. Sydney is rated amongst the top 10 most livable cities of the world. After doing some research I stumbled upon Australian Government website about national public toilets and where to find them. Also there are applications for mobile devices for public toilets. This was the find of my life time.
Only if I knew about this incredible service given by the government on that particular night! It reassured by faith in Sydney to be one of the most livable cities in the world and couldn't be called any less of a Smart City. I was curious to find out on how many public toilets are surrounding the Railway Square. There were a handful of them. The following screen shot from the website shows the list of all toilets.
Source: https://toiletmap.gov.au/Find
To my disappointment all the above list toilets on the right are in an institution. This means they are in shopping centres, libraries, markets, museums etc. These places are mostly shut at the close of business hours.
Source : Public Toilet Strategy 2014, City of Sydney
The above pie diagram shows that close to 50% of the toilets are operated by institutions other than the council/government. Where can one go post late evening in hunt for toilets?Clearly there is a lack of free standing public toilets.
The NSW government has been proposing more public toilets since 2013 as per Nicole Hasham's article 'When nature calls, Sydney responds' in The Sydney Morning Herald. But according to Kylie Galbraith, in the article 'Big wee worries - Lack of public toilets in CBD back on the agenda' on 15th Feb 2016, that the government is far from achieving the goals of having public toilets. The lack of public toilets is evident in......
References:
1. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/when-nature-calls-sydney-responds-20130717-2q4ke.html
2. http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/199816/2013-460160-02-Policy-Attachment-C-Public-Toilet-Strategy-Adopted.pdf
3. http://www.theage.com.au/comment/no-relief-in-sight-on-public-toilets-20140815-104ii8.html
4. http://www.northerndailyleader.com.au/story/3729995/big-wee-worries-lack-of-public-toilets-in-cbd-back-on-the-agenda/?cs=157
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